A bittersweet balance for parent-artists

There has long been a conflict between creative practices and parenthood, which means there has long been a struggle to fuse the two. While certain groups like Cultural ReProducers reimagine an art world where families can, you know, exist, there are few gallery shows that directly address motherhood, fatherhood, and their impact on creative practices.

However, in the artist statement for “Love is Not Enough” at Humboldt Park’s Happy Gallery, married couple Erin Elizabeth and Harry Sidebotham write, “There is profundity in the banal, but it is also spectacularly boring.” This is especially true, they say, when it comes to domestic spaces and raising kids. The artists, who collaborate as Elizabeth/Sidebotham, have two young children and use their studio practice to investigate this paradox, digging into the same question most new parents ask themselves: “Well, we’re here. What do we do now?”

Elizabeth, a conceptual artist who employs nontraditional materials like cake and sprinkles, is a bit of a foil to Sidebotham, who is “first and foremost a painter.”

An example of their successful pattern-clashing: the show at Happy Gallery marks Elizabeth/Sidebotham’s very first recorded performance, “Cake Fight,” which explores the lopsided intersection of “the domestic landscape and artistic productivity.” In the performance, there are children’s birthday cakes, a symbol of mass-produced joy and celebration, thrown between the two in an immaculate, white space.

There is joy in the interruption and sugar-slinging, but there is also the anxiety that comes with the mundane — the fear of keeping up with and becoming the Joneses. But, because Elizabeth/Sidebotham chooses mayhem and mess over neat truths, we’re left with a playroom full of overlooked truths scattered lovingly. Through March 17, Happy Gallery, 902 N. California Ave., Chicago; www.happygallerychicago.org

VGA Gallery presses ‘start’ on conversation about violence

“Gratuitous violence” is such a boring concept. At the very least, it’s one of those pearl-clutching catchphrases that family organizations like to toss around in the face of art they disagree with, and if taken literally, it implies that there is such thing as a standard, tolerable amount of violence.

What’s way more interesting than this arbitrary phrase is “Gun Ballet: the Aesethicization of Violence in Video Games” at Video Game Art Gallery, an institution devoted to the “cultural appreciation, education of video games and new media through exhibition, study, critique, and sale.” Because issues of violence often go hand-in-hand with video game criticism, it’s an important, timely show that offers a rigorous dissection of violence and its complex representation.

“’Gun Ballet’ identifies types of stylized violence in games — ranging from beautiful to gory, and realistic to abstract — and pairs this work alongside that of contemporary artists whose practice is concerned with the aesthetics of violence in games and other media,” read the curatorial notes.

Though the show was planned far in advance, it’s difficult to separate it from the moment. In the middle of what might turn out to be the most significant fight over gun access, when children are organizing and being vilified by a bunch of dogmatic airbags, it seems critical to fully grasp how folks passively engage with violence on a day-to-day basis. Here’s a great way to get those XP. Through June 3, Video Game Art Gallery, 2418 W. Bloomingdale Ave #102, Chicago; www.videogameartgallery.com